Glossary

adjustment filter — An internal communication filter that acts as a safeguard between the defense filter and the encoder. It tempers the received message with variables before allowing the listener to encode a response.

area of shared experience — When in communication with another person or other people, that area of shared or similar experiences, beliefs, likes and dislikes.

belief system — Your beliefs, primarily constructed of the various schools of thought to which you personally ascribe, including your own political, religious, and philosophical ideals. Also see defense filter, defense mechanism, instinct, internal noise, and self-image.

communication filters — Those mechanisms in your own mind, formed as a result of your personal experiences, that cause you to speak, write, listen, and read selectively. They are the reason the speaker’s or author’s intent doesn’t always match the listener’s or reader’s perception or interpretation.

decoder — That internal communication mechanism that receives and attempts to understand verbal, auditory, or sight stimuli. Within the decoder, the defense filter and adjustment filter affect the message before an appropriate response is sent to the encoder.

defense filter — A necessarily complex internal communication filter that constantly adjusts to fit sent and received messages. The defense filter typically is denser at the point of reception than at the point of transmission. Also see belief system, defense mechanism,  instinct, internal noise, and self-image.

defense mechanism — The mechanism that causes your defense filter to be larger at the reception point and smaller at the transmission point in most situations. It’s composed of your self-image, your belief system, and instinct. Also see belief system, defense filter,  instinct, internal noise, and self-image.

encoder — That internal communication mechanism that encodes an outgoing message, usually in response to verbal or non-verbal stimuli — for example, an aggressive stance or other body language — from another human.

external masks — Societal and familial masks that hinder your perspective by affecting how you perceive things when you sense them, altering what you see when you look, what you hear when you listen, etc. Also see internal masks and masks.

imagination — The ability to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste beyond the obvious.

inanimate — A non-sentient part of the Wholeness, one that is not alive.

instinct — The internal alarm that causes distortion of images between beings of different species, genders, sizes, races, geographical locations, and belief systems. Also see belief system, defense filter, defense mechanism, internal noise, and self-image.

internal masks — These make you who you are and enable you to bring your unique point of view to the reader. They are internal to you and unique to you, and they cause you to perceive sensory input as you do. Also see external masks and masks.

internal noise — The variables that affect the defense filter. They include your current mood, current physical health, time of day, weather, worries, and other details that tend to fluctuate and affect how you perceive various stimuli. Also see belief system, defense filter, defense mechanism, instinct, and self-image.

intuition — The innate ability to sense the mood of another being or the gist of an event or situation without obvious, outward clues.

masks — Those physical, mental, and emotional “norms” that adversely affect your ability to sense your world, altering or blocking your perception as an observer. The external masks include superiority, expectations, routine, normalcy, adulthood, and time constraint. The internal masks include our own experiences and our own communication filters. Also see external masks and internal masks.

negative capability — The ability to experience an event as someone or something else, especially to experience as a character something you’ve never actually experienced, and then relate that experience to your reader convincingly; person-to-person imagination.

perspective — Your physical state of being, your human-ness, and your mental and emotional state at the moment of observation.

self-image — How you see yourself in various situations with different people. Also see belief system, defense filter, defense mechanism, instinct, and internal noise.

sensory universe — Everything within your sensory range at a given time. If you’re in a closed elevator, your sensory universe is limited. If you’re in your office, it isn’t much larger (though you can expand it by glancing out the window or overhearing a conversaton filtering in from the hallway), but it probably contains a lot more stimuli. If you’re on top of a mountain, your sensory universe is much larger.

sentient being — Also called an animate, one who can sense and respond to external and internal stimuli, a living thing, a being (animal, plant, insect, microbe) who enjoys a voluntary or involuntary symbiotic relationship with the Wholeness.

shared experience — See area of shared experience.

universe — See sensory universe.

vantage point — The physical aspect from which you sense your universe at the moment of observation: upright, lying down, sitting, with your head turned in a particular direction, facing a particular direction, etc. No matter the physical position of your body, your vantage point remains at center.

viewpoint (or point of view) — What you bring to the reader. Your vantage point is always at center; your perspective (like the reader’s) originates at center.

Wholeness — The Wholeness is nature, everything, all of creation and existence, consisting of the world, everything in the world, and one great spirit that flows through and is shared by everything in the world. The word itself is the other plausible translation from the original Greek (most often hosio) or Hebrew (most often hesed) of the word for holiness.